software installed on suspect computers could be considered breaking section 3 of Computer Misuse Act, by altering data..

lack of clarity from authorities, Article 8 Human Rights Act, scope of states power must be disclosed and made clear what authorities will or won’t use ..

William Hague, who speaks for the government on computer security issues, said: “Any export of goods that could be used for internal repression is something we would want to stop” .. He also admitted the law governing software exports was a grey area ..”

Her second Reith lecture of 2011, the former director-general of the British Security Service (MI5), Eliza Manningham-Buller, discusses policy priorities since 9/11. She reflects on the Arab Spring, and argues that the West’s support of authoritarian regimes did, to some extent, fuel the growth of al-Qaeda.

Exploit in Skype on an iPhone or iPod touch, allows comprimise of your device’s address book simply by the attacker sending you a chat message. When the exploit code in the message is run, the victim’s iPhone will automatically make a new connection to a server, grabbing a larger payload, to execute and upload the iPhones entire address book file to the server.

“.. Type some JavaScript commands into the user name of a Skype account, use it to send a chat message to someone using the latest version of Skype on an iPhone or iPod touch, and load a small program onto a webserver. Within minutes, you’ll have a fully-searchable copy of the victim’s address book.

.. failure by Skype to sanitize potentially dangerous JavaScript commands from the text that gets sent in chat messages ..

It’s already been 48 hours since this vulnerability was first documented, and the vulnerable app is still available in the iTunes Store. It will be interesting to see how long it takes Apple and Skype to close the gaping hole ..”